Paula Lin­do

Rap­so­man Wen­dell Man­war­ren has had a long and var­ied ca­reer in the arts, be­gin­ning with the opera and con­tin­u­ing through the­atre, mas-mak­ing and rap­so. Man­war­ren spoke about his jour­ney to a stand­ing-room on­ly crowd at the Mon­day Night The­atre Fo­rum held on June 6, at the Trinidad The­atre Work­shop, Bel­mont.

The mu­si­cian, ac­tor and di­rec­tor grew up in Bel­mont in close prox­im­i­ty to a wide range of char­ac­ters in­volved in Car­ni­val, in­clud­ing the fa­mous sailor mas man, Ja­son Grif­fith, fa­mous man of the the­atre Austin Forsyth, sound en­gi­neer Robin Fos­ter and so­ca leg­end David Rud­der. His par­ents used to play pan and mas with dif­fer­ent bands.

"For me, grow­ing up in Bel­mont is a pow­er­ful thing, I have a ground­ing, and I've come to dis­cov­er that time and time again and try to rein­vest and rep­re­sent that in every­thing I do."Man­war­ren al­so grew up watch­ing Best Vil­lage the­atre on T&T Tele­vi­sion (TTT), where, he said, the folk cul­ture was alive. It awoke in him a love of sto­ry­telling.

"I'm a T&T sto­ry­teller, I'm ground­ed in T&T, I seek no oth­er ground­ing. It's an eter­nal quest, some­thing I can't get enough of, try­ing to un­der­stand who we are, why we are, where we're go­ing."He lament­ed the even­tu­al in­volve­ment of the State in the art form, which he said turned it in­to some­thing else.

Af­ter leav­ing St Mary's Col­lege, Man­war­ren fell in­to do­ing opera with the T&T Light Op­er­at­ic So­ci­ety along­side UK-based T&T tenor Ronald Samm and Roger Roberts–the lat­ter now Man­war­ren's part­ner in rhyme in the rap­so trio 3Canal. He got in­to the­atre in 1984 when he won the lead in Guys and Dolls, di­rect­ed by Be­lin­da Barnes. Af­ter­ward, he de­cid­ed he want­ed to be a part of the Trinidad Tent The­atre.

Tent The­atre, un­der the guid­ance of He­len Camps, was a train­ing ground for many T&T thes­pi­ans, in­clud­ing promi­nent di­rec­tor and ac­tor Ray­mond Choo Kong.

Man­war­ren said he was lucky to be there and catch a bit of the fire, as his com­pa­tri­ots be­came the next gen­er­a­tion of di­rec­tors and pro­duc­ers. He said the­atre was the first thing he found he was good at, oth­er than study­ing.

"Peo­ple would come to me and say I'm good, and the kind of peo­ple say­ing it, I knew they weren't try­ing to ma­m­aguy me. For me there was an in­her­ent re­gard and re­spect for peo­ple who were do­ing this be­fore me; I didn't come in there think­ing I was all that, which is a big dif­fer­ence to what hap­pens now."

Man­war­ren then moved on to work­ing with The Bagasse Co. It was there he re­alised that he was in­ter­est­ed in the di­rect­ing and sound de­sign as­pects of the­atre. Man­war­ren al­so be­gan to do voice ads.

"I've lived by do­ing voic­es for the last 30 years. My moth­er al­ways used to tell me to 'speak prop­er­ly' but I al­ways ap­pre­ci­at­ed our own lan­guage. I didn't think it was 'less than' so I was able to un­der­stand you could speak Eng­lish and you could speak Tri­ni."

While at Bagasse, he got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to a re­treat in Scot­land, and there he learned to "claim his pow­er." He said he re­alised he didn't have to take every job that was of­fered, and grad­u­al­ly he fell out of act­ing.

Man­war­ren was al­so work­ing with Pe­ter Min­shall at The Callaloo Co, where he learned the­atre as spec­ta­cle, and was Min­shall's as­sis­tant at the 1992 Barcelon­aand 1996 At­lanta Olympic Games, where the mas gi­ant staged mas­sive pro­duc­tions as part of the open­ing cer­e­monies. Man­war­ren al­so drummed for Glo­ria Estafan dur­ing her per­for­mance of Reach at the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the At­lanta Games.

Man­war­ren said the pre­his­to­ry of 3Canal "to many peo­ple is those three years we spent mak­ing J'Ou­vert and it was my­self, Roger Roberts and Steve Ou­ditt. Steve drew, I wrote and Roger pro­duced. Steve want­ed the group to have a bad­man name, and 3Canal res­onat­ed." "Three canal" is a ver­nac­u­lar name for a cut­lass with three lines or chan­nels on the blade close to the han­dle.

"We've since gone on to ex­ploit that metaphor: it's a weapon used to cut and clear, make a state­ment and you al­so use it to pro­tect your­self."

The band's big break came in 1997 when Man­war­ren and Roberts, to­geth­er with Stan­ton Kew­ley and John Isaacs, re­leased the song Blue. It was a tremen­dous hit and re­sult­ed in the for­ma­tion of the phe­nom­e­nal­ly large Blue J'Ou­vert band.

Man­war­ren said it was a hor­ri­ble ex­pe­ri­ence as so much could have gone wrong, and the band end­ed up "pay­ing the dev­il" with Man­war­ren get­ting hit in the throat by a rock and Roberts end­ing up in the hos­pi­tal.

Nonethe­less, he said, Blue took them all over the world. They were able to record al­most 200 songs with var­i­ous pro­duc­ers, in­clud­ing the late pro­duc­er Shel­don "$hel-$hock" Ben­jamin, who Man­war­ren re­mem­bered as be­ing no-non­sense and pure.

"We did Hap­py Song, Good Morn­ing Neigh­bour... peo­ple would stop us to tell us where they were when they heard it and how it changed their lives. I love mu­sic so much I still can't be­lieve we make mu­sic as a ca­reer, but there's a part of me that's very aware of what it is and what we could do with it."

Man­war­ren said the group de­cid­ed to do rap­so be­cause it was non-com­pet­i­tive. "It al­lowed us to make a state­ment. We had to find our voice and we had har­monies from years of singing in choirs, which no one else had." In 1999 the band re­leased Talk your Talk, which re­mains one of their most pop­u­lar songs to date.

Isaacs died in 2000, in the heart of the Car­ni­val sea­son, and Man­war­ren said his lega­cy still lives with them to­day as he was the aris­to­crat of the group who in­sist­ed they hold them­selves to a cer­tain stan­dard.

Man­war­ren has al­so worked with No­ble Dou­glas at the Lil­liput The­atre for the last 25 years or so, and acts in plays by Derek Wal­cott. He's grate­ful to have worked with Dou­glas, Ray­mond Choo Kong, Tony Hall, Ein­tou Springer, Mavis John and oth­er he­roes and that's why "I can re­late to the youth and put my­self back in their shoes a lit­tle bit. I don't take any of it for grant­ed."He lament­ed that youth nowa­days are los­ing knowl­edge of T&T cul­ture through lack of ex­po­sure in the me­dia.

"The role I see my­self is play­ing now is to fill the voids with a sense of ur­gency, and those voids for the most part have to do with knowl­edge and val­u­a­tion of self, com­mit­ment to self and self-de­ter­mi­na­tion."He al­so ad­vo­cat­ed for the cre­ation of safe spaces for the arts to de­vel­op, such as TTW, his own the­atre space the Big Black Box, and the Lit­tle Carib The­atre.

"We're still pi­o­neer­ing. We need to start in­sti­tu­tion-build­ing. Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my to in­volve the cre­ative sec­tor is just talk; we need to see what ex­ists and build on that. We need to bring back the old time days of TTT and project our­selves to the world with pride."He had two pieces of ad­vice for younger artists. First­ly, as Shake­speare said, "Above all else, to thine own self be true."

But, he chid­ed they must re­mem­ber "it didn't start with you and it won't end with you, so you need to know what came be­fore you or you'll be in trou­ble."